It comes with several typing tutorials: in Czech, English (Qwerty,
Dvorak and Colemak keyboards), Russian and Spanish, as well as simpler
exercises in German, French and Norwegian.

It interprets a simple and intuitive scripting language that
describes typing tutorials. You can easily modify existing tutorials
or create new ones according to your needs.

It supports internationalization and already has an interface in
Czech, English, Finnish, French, German and Spanish.

Users can navigate through lessons through an easy to use arrow
key based menu interface. 'vi' up, down, left and right keys can be
used too!

Thanks to its execution in text mode with the curses library, it
can be compiled and used on several operating systems, in particular
on GNU/Linux and GNU/HURD, on several variants of Unix, as well as on
Windows with the PDCurses library and MinGW.

The aim of this Free Software project is to provide valuable help to
individuals and schools all over the world in learning or teaching how
to type.

Free Software can be a valuable
resource in education. Not only can it be technically or pedagogically
superior to proprietary alternatives, but it can also promote the
values of the GNU project in the schools:

As project maintainers, our main goal is to
protect users' freedom and encourage their cooperation, by:

Encouraging users and teachers to share their needs and bring
contributions.

Keeping the tool open and easily extensible. Our goal is to empower anyone,
in particular amongst typing teachers, to satisfy one's needs by improving
lessons or writing new ones, as well as by making the tool work in one's own
language.

Making the tool universal, attractive and easy to use, so that as many
people as possible benefit from contributed work and knowledge. This should
also strengthen the user community and attract new contributors.

To see a full list of the current plans we have to improve GNU Typist,
you can read the latest TODO
file, available
here. In a nutshell, our major long-term plans include:

Porting the interface to GTK make it easier to use and navigate
between lessons.

Displaying the keyboard layout and indicating which finger is
supposed to be used while typing.

For Windows users, pre-compiled binaries are available. These
currently may have a problem with multi-byte input which will be
addressed in the next release. The binaries are available in .7z
format and can be found in the w32_binaries folder.

GNU Typist documentation can be found at
http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/doc/.
You may also find more information about GNU Typist by running
info gtypist, man gtypist, or looking in the
documentation directory for gtypist on your system (which might
be /usr/share/doc/gtypist/ or something similar).

The discussion list for GNU Typist is
<bug-gtypist@gnu.org>,
and is used to discuss all aspects of GNU Typist, including support
questions, bug reports, suggestions, patches, and new lessons.

Announcements about GNU Typist and most other GNU software are made on
<info-gnu@gnu.org>.

To subscribe to these or any GNU mailing lists, please send an empty
mail with a Subject: header line of just "subscribe" to the relevant
-request list. For example, to subscribe yourself to GNU announcement
list, you would send mail
to <info-gnu-request@gnu.org>
with no body and a Subject: header line of just "subscribe". Or you
can use
the mailing
list web interface.

Request an Enhancement

If you would like any new feature to be included in future versions of
GNU Typist, please send a request to
<bug-gtypist@gnu.org>.

Please remember that development of GNU Typist is a volunteer effort,
and you can also contribute to its development. For information about
contributing to the GNU Project, please read How to
help GNU.

You can contribute to GNU Typist by sending bug reports, suggestions,
patches and new lessons
to <bug-gtypist@gnu.org>.

You can also directly access the development versions of documentation
and source files in
our Git
repository. In particular, here are direct links to the latest
versions of our
TODO and
QUESTIONS
(answers to Brave GNU World questions) files

Simply type the tutorial, containing instructions and exercises, in a
plain text file (or in another open and standard format, such as
HTML). You may reuse some instructions available in existing
tutorials, in the
lessons/ directory in the GNU Typist sources.
Send it
to <bug-gtypist@gnu.org>.
Another contributor will take care of converting your tutorial to the
GNU Typist format.

You can also directly write your tutorial in the GNU Typist
format. It is a simple scripting language which is described in the
online manual.
Once your lesson file is complete, you can test it by simply typing
(if you named it new.typ): gtypist new.typ
You can then send it to us as described above.

Instructions for writing interface messages in new languages will be
available soon.

There are other free typing tutors, most of them released under the GNU General
Public License. They're worth trying too!

dvorak7min
is a simple ncurses-based typing tutor for those trying to get
fluent with the Dvorak keyboard layout.

DvorakNG
DvorakNG is a Dvorak typing tutor. It's heavily based on
Dvorak7min, but adds many improvements like a progress information
database.

gcompris is a set of
educational games designed for small children, including typing
games.

Griffin is an effort to
write a free typing tutor for as many Unices as possible (BSD License).

gtyping is a GTK+/GNOME
typing program. It provides character typing on a GUI keyboard, a
typing tutor that uses a text file, and a simple typing game.

JRainWords
is a small java program useful for teaching small children about
the keyboard.

jsTypingTutor
is a JavaScript program that attempts to help users and developers
type faster and more accurately. Many files are included for the
user to practice on - but, you may also use any text that can be
copied and pasted into the main screen.

Jtypist (now
called Typist) is a cousin of GNU Typist written in Java. It has a
graphical user interface and display error statistics, showing the
user what (s)he needs to improve. It has been developed by Simon
Baldwin, one of the original authors of the famous Typist program,
the ancestor of GNU Typist.

KTouch is another
program for learning to touch type. KTouch provides you with text
to train on, and adjust to different levels, depending on how good
you are. It can display which key to press next, and the correct
finger to use.

Makin'
Bakon is a typing tutor game written in C++ with STL and
Curses. Save Pig from the supermarket shelves while learning to
type to a professional standard! It Uses the Fortune database for
some of it's exercises. Contains material that may offend!

Tipptrainer
is another graphical typing tutor. At the moment, it is available
in two languages (German and English) and for two key-maps
(PC-German and PC-English).

TypeFast
is a curses-based typing practice/tutoring program. It has
rudimentary weighting on letters for which you are more prone to
failure, and it features a mode where it will only prompt for
characters from either the left or right side (conforming to
generic Dvorak layouts, as well as QWERTY).

Typespeed is a
game to test your typing speed, and compare it with your friends'.

Typing Trainer
is designed for exercising typing speed and typing accuracy, by
providing an environment to type in a copy of an original text
within a specific time period. It also has the ability to store
the results of such an exercise for exam purposes.